Tourism minister’s grizzly comments baffling

One can only conclude the provincial Minister of Tourism and Small Business Naomi Yamamoto was poorly briefed by her handlers with regard to the grizzly bear hunt issue after reading about her misinformed, head-scratching speech on Salt Spring last month (“Minister talks to breakfast crowd,” June 20 story on the Gulf Islands Driftwood website).

Having British Columbia’s tourism minister put forth the notion that the proliferation of tar sands pipelines and oil tankers, along with the escalation of a host of other industrial-scale resource extraction activities, would somehow be compatible with a robust tourism industry based on the natural beauty of the province is dubious to say the least.

But for Yamamoto to suggest that bear viewing is compatible with the trophy killing of bears, and then disproportionately claim that the grizzly hunt is a chief economic driver for the province, is inexplicably out of touch.

Contrary to Yamamoto’s assertions, there is no ecological, ethical or economic justification for continuing to trophy kill B.C.’s grizzly bears…

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